I had not yet seen a javalina in person at this point. My neighbor had once mentioned that she though javalinas had raided her trash cans one night at her temporary housing. I actually believed it was coyotes that did this because I had seen coyotes. Javalinas to me seemed to be this mythical creature that people talked about, but had yet to cross my back yard yet.
In case anyone reading this isn't sure what a javalina is, it's a creature that is not a pig, but looks alot like a pig. It however, is probably more akin to a wild boar. They are black with the coarse pig fur. They live in the desert and usually are harmless. The creatures we saw a few weeks back, certainly were harmless.
It was actually surprising to see them for a few reasons. For one, I thought they were nighttime creatures (based on my neighbors story about the trash). Second, it was a very busy time in the neighborhood. School was just letting out, cars were driving down the road. To see a heard of these creatures out during this time seemed very strange. I felt even worse when I witnessed one of them get hit by a car as they raced across the road. This didn't seem to bother the javalina, however, because it go right back up and finished running across the street.
I saw the heard take the desert path behind my house. So of course, when we got home, I went out back and crawled up the rocks by my pool (the thing I tell my kids NEVER to do when they are out back). I tried to see if I could find some javalinas, but they were long gone. A ton of kids from the school had the same idea because they were all spread out in the desert area looking too.
So there you have it, my first javalina sighting. I just feel bad because while Tori and Stefan saw them too, Merrick was rear facing in the stroller and missed it. Poor guy!
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